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Tony Mendez of 'Argo': The spy is a true artist

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
01/19/2013 07:22:39 AM EST

By Michael S. Rosenwald

The Washington Post.

KNOXVILLE, Md. -- The artist was a spy. In some of the world's most dangerous places, his cover was often his palette. And his painter's eye made him a master of disguise and subterfuge during a storied CIA career that is the subject of an Oscar-nominated movie starring Ben Affleck.

Now retired, Tony Mendez is not easy to find. He has hidden himself along a rocky road in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western Maryland, where he and his wife, Jonna, another former spy, have traded the art of deception for artistry of a different sort.

Their secluded red carriage house on 40 acres in Knoxville, about 15 miles from Frederick, is connected to a large gallery and studios. Tony paints. Jonna shoots photographs. Antonio "Toby" Mendez, Tony's son, shows up every day to sculpt. They work quietly and in seclusion and don't even interact much with one another while they work.

"If I'm in the middle of something, and one of them came in and said I should make something yellow, that would be blasphemy," Tony said. "We leave each other alone."

Their solitude has been interrupted lately by brave limousine drivers fetching Tony and Jonna for trips to Hollywood and New York with Affleck, who plays Tony in "Argo" and directed the acclaimed film about the daring rescue in January 1980 of six American diplomats during the Iranian hostage crisis.

The publicity machine for the movie has nudged a reclusive family into public view.

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For the ex-spies, it has been unfamiliar terrain. For the artists, it has been great for business, particularly Tony's landscapes.

A few months ago, at the family's most recent showing, 600 people came through over a weekend, more than doubling the normal foot traffic. The family ran out of food for two days in two hours. Tony sat in a director's chair in front of an "Argo" poster -- his glasses and graying beard a colorless contrast with his younger, glamorous doppelganger -- and signed copies of a book he wrote about his rescue operation. He also sold 16 paintings.

Antonio Mendez, like most spies, has led a double life. He always believed that his primary calling was as a painter.

He took up sketching and watercolors as a boy growing up in Nevada and Colorado and pursued a career as an illustrator before a friend gave him a help wanted ad that read, "Artists to Work Overseas -- U.S. Navy Civilians." He liked the idea of working abroad, so he went to the interview. It was conducted -- strangely, he thought -- in a dingy motel room. The interviewer handed him a paper that said, "TOP SECRET_ NO FORN DISSEM."

"Then my eye moved down the page," Mendez wrote in "The Master of Disguise," one of his memoirs. "I was staring at a recruitment guide prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency, Technical Services Division."

Mendez joined the agency in 1965 and became an expert forger and disguiser. He eventually went abroad, often working undercover as an artist. His speciality was spiriting people out of countries before they were killed, as he does in "Argo," when he dreamed up a fake movie to whisk six U.S. diplomats out of Iran. That was his second life -- as a spy, a deceiver.

"I've always considered myself to be an artist first, and for 25 years, I was a pretty good spy," he often says.

Mendez, now 72, retired from the CIA in 1990. His clandestine career was revealed in 1997 when the CIA declassified the Argo mission and honored him as one of its 50 best agents of its first 50 years.

Getting Mendez talking about his life is a thorny operation. Though he has a sharp, dry sense of humor, he can be taciturn with strangers, even on his best days.

Affleck spent hours with Mendez prepping for the movie, fishing for as many details as he could pry loose. They wound up developing a funny rapport, and it has deepened as the two have met with Oscar voters and reporters.

Asked what he first thought of Affleck, Mendez paused and then, in a typical monotone voice, replied, "I thought he was a little overbearing."

Affleck laughed and retorted: "The guy thinks he's in the Catskills. It's unbelievable. It's a CIA guy, and he's doing schtick. Tony Mendez will be at the HaHa Hole."

Affleck's affection for Mendez is palpable, and he was fascinated by his paintings, though he couldn't work them into the film.

"It's extremely unusual, it seems to me, to have a guy who does this job who is also an artist," he said. "Those two things seem at odds -- an operative and an artist. But when you look at the art itself, you see the fastidiousness and the detail, and I think that speaks to his character and why he was successful."

As a boy, Toby Mendez, now 49, often went into his father's studio, where he played with tools and fashioned wood into miniature boats and toys. Today, he sculpts for public and private clients. He sculpted the Thurgood Marshall monument at the Maryland State House in Annapolis and of "The Teammates," the statue outside Fenway Park in Boston that honors Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky.

Mendez's wife, Jonna -- his first, wife, Karen, died of cancer in 1986 -- takes her cameras around the world, shooting streetscapes, familiar territory in her own spy days.

"I did photography at the CIA," said Jonna, 67. And she paused. "Very different photography. Have you ever been in the Spy Museum? Some of my cameras are in there. One's in a button. One's in a pen."

They're looking forward getting back to their old lives. Tony and Jonna haven't had much time to work.

"I think the 15 minutes will be up soon," Jonna said.

They keep loose connections to the CIA, interviewing job candidates and occasionally sending memos. And they serve on the board of directors at the Spy Museum, where Tony led a counterfeiting class not long ago.

"He taught everyone to perfectly forge Vladimir Putin's signature," Jonna said, as a smile materialized on Tony's face. "And then he sent them into the world."

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